By Jacob Wheeler
Sun editor
For Empire resident and retired nurse Kathy Wiejaczka, the spark to run for office came when she and her 34-year-old daughter Adele attended the Women’s March on Washington, Jan. 21, 2017. With rallies in cities and towns across the nation, the Women’s March is considered the largest single-day demonstration in U.S. history. It overshadowed the crowds at the previous day’s presidential inauguration.
Mother and daughter vividly remember the peaceful solidarity shared by hundreds of thousands of women (and some men). They particularly remember surfacing from the subway at 8 a.m. in downtown D.C. and witnessing a woman approach a police officer to say, “Sir, we’re going to show you the most peaceful protest you’ve ever seen.”
“Yes ma’am, I expect that it will be,” said the man in blue.
“That’s how we women do it,” she responded.
Wiejaczka beams when she remembers the empowering crowds and the electrifying speeches—by Sister Simone Campbell and the Nuns on the Bus, by Michael Moore, by Gloria Steinem, by Cecile Richards. She contrasts the mood on that day with the divisiveness and negativity that she says has permeated American politics since then.
Husband Kent Wiejaczka, who owns Kent Remodeling and Construction, had purchased Kathy a quilting kit after the 2016 election to help occupy her time. (Kathy retired in 2014 as a special education nurse from the Traverse Bay Area Intermediate School District, TBAISD.) But she hasn’t done much quilting since she announced her candidacy for state representative in early 2018 and began knocking on thousands of doors throughout Michigan’s 101st district.
“I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t sit there and pretend that everything was OK,” Kathy said. “What was happening (throughout our country) was not OK. … I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take his anymore,” she quoted the 1975 film classic Network.
Wiejaczka cited the divisiveness and anger, and marginalization of the less fortunate, under Trump as her motivation to run for office. She remembered words from her late father, a member of the “greatest generation” who fought in World War II in France and Germany.
“My dad would say, ‘if someone needs help, you help them’. My dad was talking to me, saying ‘you have something to give, you have a comfortable life, use it to make a difference’. I took those words to heart.”
Kathy Wiejaczka is part of a tidal wave of women first-time candidates running for office this midterm election. The surge of newly emboldened citizens includes teachers, nurses, social workers, waitresses, doctors and community organizers. The fire under them was lit by a history of patriarchal politics and power structures; the raw wound of a celebrity who has openly bragged of sexually assaulting women occupying the Oval Office; wage gaps and work environments that continue to favor men over women; a movement of empowerment that rose with the Women’s March and continues to crest with the #MeToo movement against sexual assault.
Here in Michigan, women headline the top of the Democratic ticket for state office (gubernatorial candidate Gretchen Whitmer, attorney general Dana Nessel, secretary of state Jocelyn Benson). The state has added jobs and economic growth under eight years of term-limited Governor Rick Snyder. But environmental calamities and public health risks have tarnished the reputation of “Pure Michigan”. The Flint water crisis and state government coverup; the Emergency Manager Law that took power away from local municipalities and led, in part, to the Flint debacle; the curtailed power of the Department of Environmental Quality and other regulatory agencies; controversies over the Line 5 oil pipelines under the Straits of Mackinac, Nestle’s groundwater withdrawal, and water shutoffs in Detroit—these, too, ring in the ears of Michigan voters this election season.
“If you don’t have your health …”
Healthcare tops Kathy Wiejaczka’s list of key issues on her website. The others are jobs and wages, education, infrastructure, and the environment.
“When I go door-to-door, I always tell people I’m a nurse, and I want to serve them the way I’ve served people the past 39 years,” she said. “I mean those words sincerely. I’ve been there at my patients’ first breaths. As a hospice nurse I’ve been there at their last breaths. Helping people, giving people any assistance that I can, that’s how I see my role in Lansing.”
One home visit led Wiejaczka to meet a 95-year-old retired Emergency Room physician who confided to her that “our healthcare system is broken.” If elected, she views it as her charge to protect the Affordable Care Act’s individual mandate on the state level, to protect Medicaid, and to help working-class Michiganders afford health insurance.
“If you don’t have your health, you have nothing,” Wiejaczka said. “You can’t have fun, you can’t work, you can’t make money. Healthcare is fundamental. And right now it’s broken.”
Before retiring from TBAISD, Wiejaczka worked for 14 years at the “New Campus” for emotionally impaired youth. Asked to share her proudest moments as a nurse, she recalled the story of a 5-year-old boy whocouldwalk but refused to walk, partly as a result of the trauma he had experienced in his young life. “Within 5 months (at New Campus) he was walking and talking,” she beamed. Another child refused to bathe, and was bullied for how he smelled. “Why are you [helping me]?” the boy asked her. “Because I can,” she told him. “No one had ever done this before. He needed to know that someone out there cared about him.”
Wiejaczka’s website addresses where her professional experiences meet public policy: “Healthcare affects every aspect of our lives. It is a right and a necessity. Mental healthcare must be expanded in Michigan and as a former mental health nurse, I have seen the effects of the lack of care in our state.”
I watched Kathy Wiejaczka canvass homes in Glen Arbor on Monday, Sept. 24, with the election looming six weeks away. She estimates she has personally knocked on about 3,000 doors; volunteers and her campaign manager Amanda Elliott have reached another 7-8,000. The expansive 101st district is comprised of Leelanau, Benzie, Manistee and Mason counties; the latter counties to the south are the most populous. The campaign’s goal is ultimately to hit 18,000 houses, or make contact with 26,000 voters.
Though she has never run for office before, Wiejaczka says the door knocking seems innate, and conversations with strangers natural. She compares it to home visits as a nurse.
“My husband says I have a gift for figuring out right away if people want to talk,” Wiejaczka chuckles. “Nurses are like social workers. We allow people to talk, and we listen. Usually I get out what I need to say in 10 seconds. Then I listen to them.”
“I used to think I wasn’t qualified (for state office). I thought, ‘I’m just a nurse’. I have come to realize that we all have expertise that can be used to be a legislator.”
When knocking on doors, Wiejaczka refused to bring up Trump’s name, except to allude to the divisive tone of our national politics. She also refused to openly criticize her opponent in the race for state representative, former WTCM radio personality, and Lake Ann resident, Jack O’Malley, who also declared his first-time candidacy for office early this year.
But she drew a contrast between their professional experiences, and how that might impact their work in the state legislature.
“What I represent is 39 years of working in an environment of unpredictability. You never knew when someone would have a baby who need to be resuscitated. There were crises all the time,” Wiejaczka said. “The difference is that he worked in a controlled environment; I worked in an uncontrolled environment. I often didn’t eat at work. I didn’t know when a call would come over the PA, telling us there was a kid having a seizure, or a kid in a diabetic coma.”
Wiejaczka’s campaign believes the 101st is a swing district that’s up for grabs. Though traditionally Republican, Northport attorney Dan Scripps won it during the Obama election of 2008. It has been held by Republicans since the Tea Party wave of 2010; each election has been very close, until GOP incumbent Curt VanderWall easily beat Scripps during the Trump wave in 2016. VanderWall is running, instead, for the State Senate.
Jack O’Malley probably enjoys greater name recognition in the district. For the last 34 years he has affably hosted a morning radio show on WTCM. As such, Wiejaczka compares this to a David vs. Goliath battle. On the other hand, she might benefit from what some predict will be a “blue wave” election in 2018, with women at the forefront in Michigan and across the nation.
That outlook means little to Wiejaczka. “I don’t pay attention to [talk of a “blue wave”]. Many things are out of our control,” she said. “I can only control how many doors I knock on. I can’t control the state of affairs in D.C. I know that I’m an alternative because I’ve got a proven track record of doing things under crisis situations.”
Wiejaczka also knows that the district is traditionally conservative and includes many Trump faithful. But she cherishes the conversations she’s had with those across the political aisle who have committed to vote for her. In Ludington she says she met a retired firefighter, and Republican, from West Virginia who, she says, told her, “we’ve got a lot in common. You’ve also been around a lot of death, and trauma. … I can trust you, you have my vote.”
Conversations on the air, conversations with voters
Republican candidate Jack O’Malley said he’ll miss being on the radio and the friendships he has made with his listeners over 34 years on the air. He has shared many life events with people—epic snowstorms, birthdays and retirements, the 9/11 terrorist attacks, to name a few.
“I feel like I’ve been a part of people’s lives, that’s special,” he said.
O’Malley feels that, in many ways, radio and politics are similar.
“I’ve been meeting people, shaking hands, winning people over for 34 years. You have to garner an audience, and show people you care.”
O’Malley told me he’s a Republican because he’s not a Democrat, he’s a conservative. He believes that the Democrats have in recent decades gone too far to the left, toward socialism. He also decries the national and statewide media and what he perceives as their lurch to the left.
O’Malley says he enters this race with no personal agenda, but on his website touts “good jobs, better schools and training for the trades along with roads and no-fault insurance reforms” as well as “housing issues and diminishing child care due … to excessive regulations.” His core listed “issues” include: the economy and jobs, education, healthcare, insurance reform, roads, recreation and tourism, agriculture, energy and the environment, and veterans.
Drawing a contrast to Wiejaczka, O’Malley said he opposes national or single-payer healthcare. And he said he believes the country and the state are headed in the right direction.
Negative party mailers
Some households in the district recently received a negative mailer that attacked Wiejaczka, featured an unflattering photo of her, and incorrectly stat
ed that “she supports a complete government takeover of your healthcare”. The mailer encouraged the reader to visit the website RealKathyWiejaczka.com and “tell her you oppose a total government takeover of our healthcare.” The mailer didn’t come from O’Malley, he said, but was paid for, and sent, by the Michigan Republican Party in Lansing. Both major parties have used this tactic in the past to embolden their base.
Jack O’Malley said he didn’t know about the anti-Wiejaczka mailer but stopped short of condemning the mailer, the message or the practice.
“There are certain things that happen in campaigns on both sides that are out of the control of local candidates,” said O’Malley. “Parties act on their own behalf. That’s our system. That’s our campaign finance laws. … Do I like it? I don’t. The state GOP party didn’t tell me. It’s complicated. But it’s a discussion for a different time.”
O’Malley predicted that the Democratic party will come after him, too, particularly if he begins to pull ahead in the race.
“Politics since the beginning of time is rough,” he said.
Kathy Wiejaczka and Jack O’Malley have two more debates scheduled before the Nov. 6 election: the “Cherry Pie debate” Oct. 11 at the Glen Arbor Township Hall (moderated by the Leelanau Enterpriseand Interlochen Public Radio), and Oct. 23 in Mason County.